Winning Elections

So the Seattle Seahawks lost the Super Bowl in a heartbreaker. This part of the world is in mourning. Folks have been living and breathing Super Bowl mania for, it seems, years, even before the Hawks went to the 2014 Bowl.

New England, of course, is ecstatic. They’ll be having the parades Seattle had last year (when the weather allows).

Elections resemble sports events. When I was young, winning both elections and sports contests was more important to me than winning is now. Especially with elections, I’ve seen too many defeats turn into later victories and victories descend into defeat. The United States hasn’t missed an election since the country began them back in the eighteenth century, so there’s always next time.

It’s the work in between that’s important. So can we stop obsessing about who’s going to run late in 2016?

Why I Had My Children Vaccinated

The only available vaccine I remember in my early childhood was against typhoid fever. A great aunt had caught the disease in her teen years and almost died. My mother made sure my brother and I were vaccinated against it.

I contracted whooping cough when I was a few months old. I caught it from my brother who caught it from school classmates. I don’t remember the illness, of course, but my mother certainly did. She remembered listening to the “whoop” of two children struggling to breathe, fearful she would lose them.

I remember the measles I got when I was three or four. Mine was a mild case. My brother’s case was quite serious. He lay for days in a darkened bedroom to avoid harm to his eyes.

When I was about two, my parents cut short our family vacation. I had developed fever and vomiting, and they were terrified that I might have caught polio from an outbreak not far from where we were staying. Fortunately, I did not have polio, and years later, my mother’s voice still reflected relief when she told of that time.

I have vague memories of a funeral for a neighborhood child who died of polio. I remember pictures of children encased in “iron lungs,” the mechanical devices that breathed for them for however long it took to recover chest muscles paralyzed by polio.

When the polio vaccine became available, my mother rushed us to the nearest vaccination center. It came too late for a classmate, who had caught the disease earlier and walked now with a twisted leg.

Of course I brought my children to the doctor for vaccinations against those diseases. I didn’t want to know the fear my mother knew.

Trapping Bunnies

I take a break from politics in the other Washington (DC) to observe those of my hometown’s city government. That would be Langley, Washington, population somewhere between 1,000 and 1200.

The town council meetings are lively at times—heated arguments over building an elevator, or maybe a funicular, from the harbor up the bluff to the town center. What changes should we allow to historic buildings? How do we manage parking in an increasingly crowded downtown? Should we allow portable food wagons within the city? If so, all year or just in the summer? And so on.

Recently, Langley has experienced a growing problem with our rabbit population. Some of the town’s citizens are irked because the bunnies enjoy munching on landscaping and vegetable plants in their yards. Many others defend the creatures.

The mayor says the town is not going to become involved in euthanizing or otherwise harming the bunnies. “It would upset too many of our citizens,” he says. He obviously knows which side his political bread is buttered on.

Too bad election to national public office requires the contributions of wealthy individuals in the billions of dollars. Otherwise, elected officials in the other Washington might listen to their less wealthy constituents the way our council members do to Langley’s citizens.

A Left-Handed Christian in the Religiously Right-Handed World

I have difficulty pinpointing where the ideas for my stories come from. A Sense of Mission, my favorite, is the only one written in first person.

At one point, Kaitlin, the main character, says “I felt as if I were a left-handed Christian in the world of the religiously right-handed.”

Maybe that was the germ for the story. I often feel like a left-handed Christian. I suppose most of us, Christian or not, feel out of synch with the drummer at times. For one thing, I’m too serious. My mother was always encouraging me to “get out and have some fun.” To this day, “getting out” requires effort. Sometimes I should exert the effort. Too easy for a writer to stay stuck in solitude.

But sometimes solitude is what I need. I no longer apologize for that. The choice is not cut and dried. Whether we crave solitude or the next party, we strive for the right balance.

Kaitlin, whose life circumstances were far different from mine, found her way. She took wrong turns, for all the best reasons, but finally discovered how to live as she was meant to live.

I doubt any of us has a perfect life, though some seem more blessed than others. Regardless, write with the hand given you.

What Do You Know About Our Immigration System?

Amy Chua, the daughter of Chinese immigrants to the United States, wrote an article several years ago, which I found the other day. According to the article, Chua, a professor at Yale Law School, believes in our immigration program—but with changes. She suggested that our immigrant visas award ability and job skills needed by the U.S., more than family preference, as it does today.

As a U.S. visa officer overseas, I interviewed applicants for immigrant visas to the United States, leading to permanent residence here. Those visas were typically awarded to a wage earner, a spouse, and minor children. Others went to brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens, unrelated to job skills.

Chua believes the practice of sibling immigration tends to keep immigrants in enclaves instead of assimilating more quickly into the country’s culture.

I favor, as Chua does, the elimination of sibling visas (after current ones in the pipeline pass through) and their replacement with an increase in immigrant visas related to job skills that are in short supply. Spouses and minor children would continue to be included.

In addition, entries to the U.S. should also include refugees. “Huddled masses yearning to breathe free” are part of our national fabric.

Fairness also should guide our decisions about undocumented residents. Many of them have been here for years and are contributing valuable skills. Some were brought here as children, have assimilated into American culture, and are studying toward college degrees.

[Amy Chua’s article was printed in the Seattle Times on February 3, 2008.]

American Atrocities at Abu Ghraib and the Paris Murders

According to news reports, one of the terrorists involved in the January 7 attacks on journalists and a kosher market in France was angered years earlier by pictures of the Abu Ghraib prison atrocities.

Americans appear to have forgotten those images of U.S. soldiers humiliating Iraqi prisoners in 2003. Prisoners were stripped naked, forced into humiliating positions, and otherwise inhumanely treated. The resulting scandal tarnished the reputation of the United States as a defender of human rights. China noted the hypocrisy of our issuance of human rights reports, detailing abuses in virtually every country on the globe, when we, obviously, have our own problems.

Nothing excuses terrorist murders, but sins (and the atrocities at Abu Ghraib were certainly sins) tend to breed consequences spilling over into later suffering of innocents.

The talk of American exceptionalism signifies nothing if we don’t acknowledge that we have failings. Repentance for such failings is not a sign of weakness but a path toward a stronger nation.

Education or Welfare?

At one time in my life, I worked for The Coca-Cola Company as a computer programmer. During a training course, we toured a bottling plant. I was amazed at the small number of workers needed to operate it.

Over the years, inventions from tractors to bottling machines to computers have revolutionized our ways of making a living. The days are long gone when most workers earned a living on a farm or in a factory. Even white collar jobs like paralegal work may be performed by computers.

Nothing in our postmodern lives presumes to take the place of parents for teaching life skills like self-discipline and curiosity, but our educational system bears the responsibility for teaching vocational skills.

Michael Moritz, a successful investor in many Silicon Valley enterprises, has donated much of his fortune to educational institutions. In an interview for Foreign Affairs (January/February 2015), he talks of government’s responsibility “to provide a fantastic educational system so that people have the skills and wherewithal to be able to make a living for themselves in a world where manual labor is no longer valued.”

Such education requires funding. Are we willing to pay for it? Or do we want to see more aimless, unemployed citizens? Your call.

The Dilemma of Having Convictions and Acting Stupid

“Generally speaking, I like the people in favor of abortion better than I like the ones against it, but I`m on the side of the people against it.”
—Andy Rooney, Chicago Tribune, 1985

In his thought-provoking book, Vanishing Grace; Whatever Happened to the Good News? Philip Yancey further quotes Rooney: “I’ve decided I’m against abortion . . . But I have a dilemma in that I much prefer the pro-choice to the pro-life people. I’d much rather eat dinner with a group of the former.”

Why did Rooney find so much to dislike among card carrying Christians? In the case of abortion, at least, it didn’t spring from being on the wrong side of an issue that passionately stirs them.

Maybe it’s because Christians sometimes act like spoiled children upset at being replaced by younger siblings. Christian culture is no longer the favored child.

Christians now are asked to explain themselves: How did the South become the Bible Belt even though its pre-Civil War white Christian citizens accepted slavery as God’s will? Why, when slavery was abolished, did they create segregation? Why do some Christians become ballistic over climate change instead of allowing reasonable debate? Spew hatred of gays? Identify so closely with politics that they draw harsh lines against those with different political opinions?

Quoting Yancey again: “The issue is not whether I agree with someone but rather how I treat someone with whom I profoundly disagree.”

Lesson from Charlie Hebdo: Be Angry But Sin Not

I doubt I would ever have read Charlie Hebdo even if French were my native language. Some of its offerings appear, IMHO, unnecessarily offensive. Nevertheless, I am appalled at the murders at the headquarters of the French journal, as are those who tweet “Je Suis Charlie” (I Am Charlie).”

Hopefully, few of us will kill because of our disagreement with another—but many of us listen to lies about them, or half truths, or intemperate accusations. We are thus a party to the incivility and political dysfunction that permeates this age. Perhaps Charlie Hebdo even contributed to this atmosphere.

Anger is not necessarily bad in itself. It’s how we handle our anger that counts. To understand someone does not erase our disagreement with him or her. It does prevent rancor and destroy hatred.

College Dorms, Nunneries, and Monasteries

In my senior year in college, I became engaged to be married. My friends in the women’s dorm celebrated by throwing me in the shower. The ritual was practiced every time one of us in the dorm became engaged.

We spent a lot of gab time, too, into the late hours or on weekends. We developed friendships and shared our hopes.

I remember those days when I think about women and men who miss some of that non-romantic, same sex friendship by pairing off into couples too early.

I didn’t grow up in a Christian tradition that called some into “vocations” as lifetime disciples of the church, practicing celibacy. Still, those ancient traditions might offer ideas for young and new adults.

Young women and men could be guided into adulthood within a community of their own sex for a few years, perhaps overseen by caring adults. A kind of community to practice discernment, if you will.

The calling would not be permanent for most, though a few might remain in the community. It could provide a place for those singles who choose less than lucrative careers to serve others, who want encouragement to lead a life less devoted to consumerism. It could also offer a refuge for those attempting to find their place after a divorce or other loss.

The trail from childhood to adulthood winds longer in our developed societies. Perhaps an intermediate community after the family could aid some to better negotiate the transition.

Two-Parent Families Stage a Comeback—in Seattle?

Seattle family Seattle is a hip city, known for the nation’s highest minimum wage, recycling, and the number of young educated elites moving in. Odd that recent census data shows Seattle with the highest percentage of children in married-couple households in the fifty largest cities in the U.S. (Seattle Times, December 28, 2014)

Seattle edged out more conservative urban areas like Salt Lake City and Colorado Springs. Seattle is one of only three cities that has increased the percentage of married households since 2000. (Washington, D.C. and Atlanta, Georgia, cities with a large percentage of urban professionals, also showed increases.)

One reason, observers say, is that couples in Seattle tend to be highly educated with well-paying jobs. This would suggest that if we want to encourage family stability, we should provide quality education for all our children and jobs with adequate wages for their parents.

American Prosperity Through the Family Photo Album

Wilhite Family 1 An ancient photograph inherited from my mother shows her mother’s family gathered for a family photo on their farm in Tennessee. One child is barefoot. Grim faces stare at the viewer.

Wilhite Family 2 Also passed down is another photo portraying most of the same family members grown older, with spouses and children. They are now nicely dressed like any middle-class family of the time would be. All, including the children, wear shoes. Their greater prosperity is apparent.

That progression of pictures depicts the journey of many Americans from the late 1800’s through most of the twentieth century. The story is of whole generations lifted from a subsistence lifestyle.

Today, figures indicate not just a halt to that growth but a reversal. Inequality has also increased between the wealthy and the rest of Americans. These trends were in place before the recession that began in 2008.

As the employment rate picks up, we need to insure that the wages of working Americans support a decent standard of living.

How I Found My Way Back to Christmas in an Islamic Country

I don’t remember the details of the Christmas after I turned thirteen. Probably the season passed as it always had. Trimming the tree, star on top. Presents secretly wrapped and joining others under the tree. Reading the Christmas story from the book of Luke under the mantel lights in the living room. Our traditional foods, including boiled custard.

No doubt I would have remembered more if I’d known that my father would die before the winter was over.

The next Christmas, my mother and my brother and I didn’t celebrate Christmas at home. We feared it would be too reminiscent of the last one with my father. We traveled to St. Augustine, Florida, and stayed in a motel. No Christmas tree. No boiled custard. Probably we exchanged presents, but I don’t remember them. We took a walk along the beach, but we couldn’t swim because the weather turned too cold. That’s the way it was. Cold and dreary.

Eventually, we would adjust and celebrate Christmas at home. Nevertheless, for me, the magic was gone.

Years later I spent several Christmas seasons in Muslim majority countries where the Santa Claus kind of Christmas did not exist. Instead, I gathered with a few expatriate Christians for small celebrations. We had an amateur concert of Christmas carols one year, I remember.

I began to see that Christmas had nothing to do with Christmas trees or presents or boiled custard. I’m not against a Christmas that includes these things. I enjoy the story of Scrooge and movies like “It’s a Wonderful Life.” But they’re not Christmas.

Christmas is just one day of the Christian calendar. It’s the beginning. Ultimately, it leads to the Crucifixion. Joy in Christmas is always mixed with a little sadness.

Christmas is not a joyous time for all, but that’s okay. Christmas is Emmanuel, God with us for all times.

Blessed Are the Debonair

“Blessed are the meek,” the New Testament book of Matthew states. Who in the world wants to be meek? The word has connotations of a doormat type of submissiveness. Where’s the blessedness in a person like that?

During my days of studying French, I bought a Bible in the French language. To aid the learning process, I compared well-known verses in English and French. In the French version, “meek” is translated “debonair.” Now that’s a bright, cheerful word, lacking the usual connotations associated with meek.

According to my French dictionary, debonair means good natured or kindly. According to my English dictionary (OED), debonair means “confident, stylish, and charming.”

My guess is that when Jesus suggested a meek person, he meant someone who is confident enough to focus on others rather than oneself, to put them at ease, and to know concern for their interests.

Golden Rule Applied to Captives

One of my duties when I worked for U.S. embassies and consulates in foreign countries was visiting American citizens in foreign jails. We wanted assurances that they weren’t tortured or otherwise ill treated.

The humane treatment of prisoners , especially political prisoners, has a been a bedrock of U.S. foreign policy. I was proud to speak out for our imprisoned Americans, aware of our tradition of opposing torture.

What would I say today?

Any treatment of our prisoners, including enemy combatants, may be the measure meted out to our captive citizens by other countries. Treat our prisoners as we would want our own citizens, including our soldiers, to be treated in foreign jails.

The Flap Over Vladimir

The Russian currency has tumbled in the world money markets. A combination of circumstances contributed. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions in the Ukraine led to sanctions by Europe and the U.S. In addition, it’s not a happy time for oil producers like Russia, as oil prices have reached historic lows.

Due to what is called “crony capitalism,” Russia missed opportunities to evolve into a responsible actor on the world stage when the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990’s. Too much money has gone to Kremlin business favorites, and corruption has harmed ordinary Russians. At the same time, the West overplayed its triumph.

The desire for respect and security gave Putin the chance to play on the historic Russian fear of domination by outside powers. Unlike the United States, Russia historically has suffered from invasion, including Mongols in the thirteenth century, Napoleon in the nineteenth, and Germany in the twentieth.

Alexander J. Motyl, in a recent article in Foreign Affairs, says we should take a page from U.S. Cold War diplomat George Kennan. Contain Putin by sanctions and economic means so that he does not overpower the countries around him.

At the same time, recognize that Russia has legitimate fears due to its past history. Wait until the opportunity to establish friendlier relations. Never humiliate. Hubris does not make for partnership.

Why We Enjoy Stories Set in Small Communities

The village is an ideal setting for character development, especially a mystery. Even some of the detectives in the hard boiled genre chase their suspects in locales far from New York or London. The Simon Serrailler series by Susan Hill is set in the cathedral town of Lafferton, England, an idyllic seeming town. Yet crimes happen there, and the small town setting emphasizes them.

Character-driven mysteries (my favorites) typically involve a small number of characters. Time is required to develop each character, including, of course, suspects. Thus, small communities are ideal, since the inhabitants are more likely to be known to each other (supposedly). Characters can easily be introduced through other characters.

One of my novels (Quiet Deception) is set in a small college town and is my only straight mystery. The others contain a twist of mystery, but I’m more interested in how the characters evolve and the moral dilemmas they face.

Several of my novels are set in diplomatic communities. Having experienced these, I know how ideal this setting is for character development. A few Americans are assigned to work together and live in a foreign country for the common purpose of representing the United States through various tasks. Normally, they will include ambitious, work driven types as well as those highly motivated to serve their country. Sprinkle in a few significant others in close proximity and add a complex character with an enigmatic past. Then mix in problems from the foreign surroundings, such as hostility toward Americans. You have a ready-made setting for conflict.

Heroes and the Rest of Us

I had never heard of a small group of resisters to Nazism called the White Rose until I read about them in an article in Plough Quarterly (Autumn, 2014). The White Rose passed out leaflets calling for subversive activities against Nazi war efforts in early 1940’s Germany. Eventually, the resisters were caught, tried, and executed.

The article was written by Maximilian Probst, grandson of one of the resisters. “Heroism,” he wrote, “will always start when people turn away from their own persons and place themselves in the service of a cause, a cause that may often only affect them indirectly, a cause in the service of others, of the disadvantaged, the persecuted, the oppressed, the tortured, the murdered.”

Not all of us, Probst said, are called to be heroes, but we can remember them by taking up “our mundane and daily task of living an upright life.”

To me, this means practicing quiet subversion against the dominant culture of the day, which reckons pleasure and the amassing of wealth as the chief ends of life. Christians in the West are, as theologian Walter Brueggemann expressed it, exiles, an inconvenience to “consumer oriented capitalism.” (Deep Memory, Exuberant Hope, Walter Brueggemann.)

December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001

Pearl Harbor Attack December 7, my calendar notes, is Pearl Harbor Day. The day commemorates lives lost in the attack on the U.S. naval base in Hawaii by Japanese forces in 1941. It led immediately to our entry into World II.

I understand the clutch in the gut Americans felt when they turned on their radios early on that Sunday morning. I felt the same when I walked into a room at the U.S. consulate in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, on September 11, 2001, and saw the television tuned to CNN. In living color, we watched over and over the replays of the attacks on New York and other places “out of a clear blue sky.”

Attack on the Twin Towers In an article in the Foreign Service Journal (January, 2012), Margaret Sullivan recounted her early years in China as the daughter of an American missionary teacher when Japanese forces took over China. Ms. Sullivan remembers a Japanese soldier smiling at her family as they went through a checkpoint.

Now, she said, she has trouble accepting the wartime evaluation of Japanese people.

We tend to demonize any who are related to those who harm our country. We have difficulty seeing “the enemy” as individuals, some choosing to do harm, others simply caught up in an evil they did not condone.

Ms. Sullivan wrote: “I still grapple with the critical distinction between abhorring evil acts and casually lumping together all of a particular group of people as embodying that evil. And I am profoundly troubled for my own country when some among us incite hatred against the spectrum of other individuals and their widely differing communities and beliefs, as a single ‘bad guy’ entity.”

Falling Out of a Canoe: Learning to Live in Disorderly Times

Attending a canoe school years ago, I fell out of the canoe the first day. The second day, I and my teammate managed to overcome a series of rapids, including unsticking ourselves from a rock without capsizing.

Unlike canoeing, which we don’t have to attempt, we have no choice in negotiating the currents of a disorderly world. And according to a U.S. diplomat retiring after a 38-year career, the world isn’t going to improve in the near future:

“If you look at the world, you have to conclude that in the coming generation, the forces of disorder are going to be as challenging as we’ve seen them over the last 10 or 15 years . . . . learning to navigate effectively in that kind of a world is extremely important.” (William J Burns, The Foreign Service Journal, November 2014,)

Burns, encouraged U.S. diplomats to “conduct diplomacy amidst disorder.” The advice could serve any of us attempting to live rightly amidst the disorder of the day. Religious, political, and cultural institutions all swim in a turbulent current.

We choose our direction and steer as best we can. If we fall out, we get back in and use what we’ve learned. What we don’t do is allow the rapids to freeze us. We keep propelling our chosen boat despite the disorder.

Ann Gaylia O'Barr

Culture and World Events from a Christian Perspective